I got engaged a few years ago. Well, sort of. My granddaughter, who was like four at the time, told me she was going to marry me when she grew up. I was very flattered and touched -- even though I knew she'd throw me over for a younger guy someday.

Actually, I think we could learn something from four-year-olds. They demand your full attention for however long they're engaged with you. And you have their full attention -- until they move on to something else. They can move on to something else quicker than you can write and send a Tweet.

Four-year-olds understand what full engagement is. They wouldn't understand the words. But they get the concept. Just try glancing at those emails coming in on your phone while playing or talking with a four year old. They'll call you on it. EVERY time.

In an age full of digital distractions we seem to be losing our ability to be fully engaged with the people around us.

And iPhone makes three

Digital distractions are even affecting marriages. National Public Radio did a story recently about how the digital era has been a boon for romance because of online dating sites. But digital devices are getting in the way of intimacy once folks get hitched.

My favorite example: A couple who both love to play Scrabble who regularly spend a half hour after they go to bed on their phones playing Scrabble -- separately -- against computerized opponents.

Engagement's one of the big buzz words in social media these days. Everyone's looking for engagement. But no one seems to be able to say exactly what it is.

So, I looked it up. In the dictionary. Those things we used to look up words before Google.

Engagement means "an arrangement to meet or be present at a specified time and place" -- like a dinner engagement.

It's what every company wants from their social media campaigns -- full engagement with their audience.

For the most part we're not getting that.

That’s not surprising. People are doing a lot of things with the social media besides paying attention to people like us who have something we want them to buy or do.

Even without the undivided attention of their audience, some companies are succeeding at getting their message heard, repeated and acted on. Unfortunately, many more aren’t.

Match.com is far more successful, for example, than its competitors in getting users to share its primary message that its site is responsible for more marriages (see chart below).¹ We were able to measure that eight percent of Match.com users passed on the "more marriages" message to their friends. The other sites' messages got passed along only two or three percent of the time. It is interesting to see the difference this message made in how users shared it because, if you look at the other statistics, eHarmony social media showed the most endorsement activity (Likes, Diggs, Votes, etc.). Is sharing the actual content of a tweet or post more engaged than clicking on Like or Digg? We hope to study more examples like this in the near future. (The chart, below, is a readout from BluePrint, Blue Marble’s new social-media measurement system.)

You have my semi-complete attention. Honest.

We all had short attention spans when we were four. Many of us still do. But we seem to be losing our ability to be fully engaged with one another whenever there's any kind of digital distraction nearby.

So, is it any wonder we're struggling to get full engagement from the people we're targeting on social media?

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